Related papers: Optimal Control of Overdamped Systems
Microscopic machines utilize free energy to create and maintain out-of-equilibrium organization in virtually all living things. Often this takes the form of converting the free energy stored in nonequilibrium chemical potential differences…
The development of sophisticated experimental means to control nanoscale systems has motivated efforts to design driving protocols which minimize the energy dissipated to the environment. Computational models are a crucial tool in this…
A general understanding of optimal control in non-equilibrium systems would illuminate the operational principles of biological and artificial nanoscale machines. Recent work has shown that a system driven out of equilibrium by a linear…
Optimal transport theory, originally developed in the 18th century for civil engineering, has since become a powerful optimization framework across disciplines, from generative AI to cell biology. In physics, it has recently been shown to…
A central goal of thermodynamics is to identify optimal processes during which the least amount of energy is dissipated into the environment. Generally, even for simple systems, such as the parametric harmonic oscillator, optimal control…
A fundamental problem in modern thermodynamics is how a molecular-scale machine performs useful work, while operating away from thermal equilibrium without excessive dissipation. To this end, we derive a friction tensor that induces a…
Optimal control of nanomagnets has become an urgent problem for the field of spintronics as technological tools approach thermodynamically determined limits of efficiency. In complex, fluctuating systems, like nanomagnetic bits, finding…
Optimizing the energy efficiency of driving processes provides valuable insights into the underlying physics and is of crucial importance for numerous applications, from biological processes to the design of machines and robots. Knowledge…
Optimal control theory deals with finding protocols to steer a system between assigned initial and final states, such that a trajectory-dependent cost function is minimized. The application of optimal control to stochastic systems is an…
Controlling thermodynamic cycles to minimize the dissipated heat is a longstanding goal in thermodynamics, and more recently, a central challenge in stochastic thermodynamics for nanoscale systems. Here, we introduce a theoretical and…
We review recent progress in optimal control in stochastic thermodynamics. Theoretical advances provide in-depth insight into minimum-dissipation control with either full or limited (parametric) control, and spanning the limits from slow to…
Controlling the evolution of nonequilibrium systems to minimize dissipated heat or work is a key goal for designing nanodevices, both in nanotechnology and biology. Progress in computing optimal protocols has thus far been limited to either…
Physical systems driven away from equilibrium by an external controller dissipate heat to the environment; the excess entropy production in the thermal reservoir can be interpreted as a "cost" to transform the system in a finite time. The…
Optimal control is a central problem in quantum thermodynamics. When minimizing dissipated work and work fluctuations defined via the two-point measurement scheme in open quantum systems, existing approaches largely focus on the rapid- and…
Information processing machines at the nanoscales are unavoidably affected by thermal fluctuations. Efficient design requires understanding how nanomachines can operate at minimal energy dissipation. In this letter we focus on mechanical…
Information erasure inevitably leads to heat dissipation. Minimizing this dissipation will be crucial for developing small-scale information processing systems, but little is known about the optimal procedures required. We have obtained…
Biological and engineered systems operate by coupling function to the transfer of heat and/or particles down a thermal or chemical gradient. In idealized \textit{deterministically} driven systems, thermodynamic control can be exerted…
A fundamental result of thermodynamic geometry is that the optimal, minimal-work protocol that drives a nonequilibrium system between two thermodynamic states in the slow-driving limit is given by a geodesic of the friction tensor, a…
Transferring a physical system from an initial to a final state while minimizing energetic losses is an interdisciplinary control problem that bridges stochastic thermodynamics and optimal transport theory. Recent research typically…
We generalize to non equilibrium states Onsager's minimum dissipation principle. We also interpret this principle and some previous results in terms of optimal control theory. Entropy production plays the role of the cost necessary to drive…